"JUNO is a spherical neutrino detector, a hulking 20,000-tonne orb nestled deep under the mountains of Kaiping in southern China. At a cost of over $350 million, it has one purpose: to detect the order of neutrino masses. Despite coming online just 86 days ago, JUNO has already delivered some remarkable results, recording neutrino oscillation parameters with significantly more precision than all other previous experiments combined, according to press release by researchers at Germany's University of Mainz who are working with the detector."
"For decades, scientists have scavenged for mysterious the "ghost particles" known as neutrinos, which are subatomic particles with no mass and almost no electrical charge. Despite their elusive nature, ghost particles are theorized to be the most common matter particles in the universe, with trillions of the buggers passing through our bodies every second. Though numerous groups have observed neutrinos, their low-energy nature makes them incredibly hard to detect, with a number of early breakthroughs taking place throughout 2025."
Neutrinos are subatomic, nearly massless and neutral particles that pass through matter in vast numbers but remain extremely difficult to detect. Early observations found fewer solar neutrinos than expected, producing the solar neutrino tension that was resolved by recognizing neutrino flavor oscillation. After ten years of construction, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in Kaiping, China, began operation with a 20,000-tonne spherical detector located deep underground. Within 86 days JUNO recorded neutrino oscillation parameters with significantly greater precision than previous experiments, demonstrating excellent stability and aiming to determine the ordering of neutrino masses.
Read at Futurism
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